Dog Attack Liability?

Question: Dog Attack Liability?
A friend of ours was in a situation yesterday: Her husband and herself were watching a dog that they were planning on adopting. Within minutes of arriving back at their apartment complex, the said dog attacked the neighbors dog, the end result providing the need for extensive vet bills and emergency room costs for the people involved in breaking up the issue. My friend, lets say her last name is Smith, has renters insurance. The question is, will the vet bills and other bills be covered? Her Insurance states:

Coverage F- Medical Payments To Others
We will pay the necessary medical expenses that are incurred or medically ascertained within three years from the date of an accident causing “bodily injury”. Medical expenses means reasonable charges for medical, surgical, x-ray, dental, ambulance, hospital, professional nursing, prosthetic devices, & funeral services… To a person if the bodily injury … (D) Is caused by an animal owned by or in the care of an “insured”.
dental liability insurance

Best answer:

Answer by Greg P
I didn’t even read the insurance coverage. I stopped where it said “Her husband and herself were watching a dog that they were planning on adopting.” Its not their dog. They should not pay for anything as long as they tried to break it up. How were they supposed to know they were watching an aggressive dog? Whoever’s dog it is should pay.

Attack Liability

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Comments (4)
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#1 written by Gambit 1 year ago

Unfortunately the dog is under your care and control, therefore you are responsible for the injuries to the other dog, assuming the other dog or the owner didn’t do anything to provoke the attack. Medical payments is a no-fault coverage provided by the insurer, which means the insurer will pay up to the limit regardless of whether you are liable for the injuries or not. However the limit is relatively low, and this is coverage is to cover HUMAN BEINGS, not dogs. Dogs are considered property under the law. You cannot sue for pain and suffering for a pet. This would fall under the Personal or Premises liability section of your policy. The only thing is: did you inform your insurer prior to obtaining the dog that you were going to do this? If not then coverage may be denied as some insurers only insure certain breeds while some insurers will not insure dogs at all. Your options are as follows: pay for the vet bills out of pocket or report the claim to your insurer and see if it is covered.
Whether you can seek recovery from the shelter is a coin toss at best. You will have to consult a lawyer to see what your chances are, although I don’t imagine they would be good. The chances of recovering from the owner previous to the shelter are pretty much zero. The shelter took ownership of the dog when they accepted it from the previous owner, therefore they are/were the owner of the dog.

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#2 written by car253 1 year ago

The best thing to do is put in the claim. Let the claim rep who is a professional on this tell you if this situation is something that is covered or not.

The dog was still in your care even if he was not yours. So put in the claim and let the professionals tell you if its covered.

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#3 written by fishmom 1 year ago

I’m not an attorney (and don’t play one on TV). However, this dog was not owned by the people who took it home, so they can certainly make the argument that the dog belongs to the shelter and therefore the responsibility goes to the shelter.

This, BTW, is why my shelter does NOT send dogs home before they’re adopted, because we are concerned about this exact liability.

I would find out what the shelter’s assessment process is, especially in regards to dog-dog situations. Did the shelter to a behavior evaluation, and what were the results? Was this information given to your neighbors, and was there any warning about keeping the dog away from other dogs or people?

Now the other issue that I’ve always had is the fact that people knowingly surrender a dog to a shelter because it’s aggressive, and they do that without informing the shelter staff about the dog’s aggression.

Some surrenderers DO give the information to the shelter, and some shelter staff disregard it, because they’re too busy blaming them for giving up on the animal. Those shelters often place a dog with complete disregard for the fact that the average person cannot handle an aggressive dog.

If I were in this situation, I would pay a few hundred bucks to consult with my family attorney. The laws are different in every state, and community.

If the shelter refuses to pony up to cover the costs AND they placed a dog that they knew was aggressive, I would scream bloody murder about it and threaten to take the story to the media.

If the shelter had no idea that the dog was aggressive, then I’d go after the surrenderer, who I guarantee you DID know about this behavior.

It’s time that people took responsibility for the behavior of their dogs. Passing off a dog with a severe behavior problem on to somebody else is absolutely unethical and should be illegal.

The “Smiths” sound as though they did nothing wrong, and I’m sure they didn’t go into the shelter asking for a dog with severe behavior problems that would cost them thousands of dollars. The neighbors may make a claim on the Smiths’ insurance company, and I would expect that the insurance company would make an effort to collect from the shelter (if the expenses were that high).

I would have them contact the director of the shelter ASAP and meet with them. The dog should be surrendered and destroyed because it is dangerous.

With that said, I know of one case we had in which a dog passed our behavior assessments, and then went and bit a child very severely. The family did not take us to court and I wondered why, frankly, because it was a severe bite.

I’ve often thought that shelters should make it really clear that surrendering dogs with undisclosed bite histories will be held responsible for these situations, and that means financially, too. Dogs do not magically get cured of aggression when they’re surrendered to a shelter, and in fact, often are more likely to bite due to stress and exposure to unfamiliar surroundings.

So, if I were the Smiths, I’d speak with the shelter director ASAP, letting them know that I expect them to be responsible for the expenses from this attack, and would be very clear that there will be attorneys involved if they aren’t completely cooperative about it.

The shelter should be using a behavior evaluation process, and if they aren’t, then this should be a wake-up call for them. If they need help, there are lots of resources out there through HSUS. (Disclaimer: I’m not a fan of HSUS’ animal rights extremism, but they DO have great shelter resources that are free, which helps small shelters)

Good luck, and I’m really sorry this happened to your neighbors. When I started at my shelter, we were literally placing any dog that didn’t bite (really hard) during the physical exam, and we were placing some really horrible dogs, IMO. We implemented behavior assessments, and that meant that we identified and euthanized poor adoption prospects, and reduced our length of stay dramatically. We also reduced our returns for aggression quite significantly.

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#4 written by Dragon 1 year ago

Two points to consider:
1)You said that they were “planning on adopting”, which infers that they had not yet assumed ownership of the dog. Some insurance might not cover them for this reason, but according to the medical payments section cited they should not be denied coverage for this reason as the dog was in their care (per section D).
2)The medical payments section quoted says “bodily injury” but does not define that term. The “…To a person” taken out of context doesn’t let me ascertain whether it refers to the injury itself or to the expenses. It’s possible that liability for medical expenses could be limited to injuries sustained by a person or persons, rather than by another dog.
Your friend might want to have someone with a legal background review the entire relevant portion of the policy. What is clear is that because they were watching the dog they are responsible for the dog whether or not they actually own it, and that coverage under the policy is not excluded simply by virtue of the fact that they may not actually own it.

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